The Global South — the idea and the setting

“The commerce between India and Africa will be of ideas and services, not of manufactured goods against raw materials after the fashion of Western exploiters.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Working definition

The Global South is not only a geographical label. It is a political and ideological position built on postcolonial solidarity, developmental justice and a demand for reform of global governance.

• India’s engagement rests on shared histories of colonial rule, comparable developmental challenges and a common interest in a more equitable global order.
• Foundational role in the Non-Aligned Movement; consistent support for South–South cooperation.
• Movement over time → from symbolic participation to institutional leadership, marked by proactive diplomacy, strategic partnerships and a reformist agenda.
• Three theatres in this unit → Africa, Latin America, and the multilateral trade order centred on the WTO.

“The world system is a world of unequal relations.”

Immanuel Wallerstein

This remains the structural setting within which India’s Southern engagement operates.

South–South Cooperation — meaning, basis, importance

Meaning

Collaboration among developing countries across various fields, especially economic development.

Basis

• Shared histories of colonialism and economic exploitation.
• Common challenges → inadequate infrastructure, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, lack of technology.
• Treated by developing countries as a self-reliant alternative to traditional aid from developed nations.

India in South–South Cooperation — instruments, challenges, assessment

Instruments: ITEC · Development assistance · Lines of credit · IBSA · BRICS · SAARC · BIMSTEC · Technology transfer

• ITEC → technical assistance and training for professionals from developing nations.
• Development assistance → grants, concessional loans and project support to Least Developed Countries in agriculture, healthcare, education and infrastructure. C. Raja Mohan acknowledges India’s effort here.
• Lines of credit → favourable terms, low interest, for critical development projects.
• Technology transfer → information technology, agriculture, healthcare, space technology.

Assessment

• Traditional approaches have run into difficulty; mechanisms such as IBSA still hold promise.
• As some Southern states succeed in growth and technology, they can share that experience with others.
• Diversification of economic activity opens newer areas → the ground for a revitalised South–South agenda.

The resurgence — why Africa returned to the front rank

As per Rani D. Mullen, keeping certain controversies aside, the Indo-African relationship has experienced a resurgence, particularly since the turn of the twenty-first century. The economic as well as strategic importance of the continent to India has risen.

Shared civilisational vocabulary → Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and Ubuntu (I am because we are). The days of Africa as a “dark continent” are over.

Explaining the resurgence — the ‘levels of analysis’ approach

• Systems level → end of the Cold War; globalization; growing interdependence; rise of non-state actors; newer challenges such as terrorism and climate change.
• Domestic politics → India’s opening of the economy through the LPG reforms.
• Cooperation runs at bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral levels, across economic, developmental and politico-strategic fields.

Hamid Ansari’s four imperatives for cooperation: Common historical experience & cultural links · Complementarities in strengths · Common approach to development · Convergence on global matters

India’s interests in Africa

Chronology of India–Africa relations

Three phases — the levels-of-analysis frame

Rani D. Mullen uses the ‘levels of analysis’ approach — systemic factors, domestic factors, and the role of individual leaders — and divides the relationship into three phases.

Three phases of India–Africa relations. I · To 1947 (Anti-colonial struggles in India and Africa) → II · 1947 – early 1990s (Support for African independence movements, till the end of the Cold War and the opening of the economy) → III · Early 1990s onward (Western ideology dominant, NAM’s relevance wanes; India as a democratic, growing alternative to China’s expanding presence)

India–Africa relations are rooted in cultural and historical ties. As per S. Jaishankar, connections are strongest with societies on the eastern coast, nurtured by the monsoon-driven ecosystem of the Indian Ocean. Western imperialism intensified these connections in paradoxical ways: Indian labourers were recruited for colonial infrastructure and business, producing cultural exchange and a modern diaspora, while shared oppression fed a collective aspiration for freedom.

Phase I — history up to independence, 1947

Systemic factor: colonialism

• Rani D. Mullen: the relationship rests on pre-colonial trade dating back at least to the fourteenth century, and on forced and indentured labour sent to Africa from India in the nineteenth century.
• The shared experience of colonial subjugation by the Portuguese, French and particularly the British was the most important systemic factor.
• Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech of 1918, arguing democracy and self-determination as war aims, inspired India’s nationalist leaders to champion the rights of others under imperial rule.
• Jawaharlal Nehru organised and served as the sole Congress delegate at the League against Imperialism conference, Brussels, 1927.
• Through the 1930s Congress resolutions denounced imperialism including in Africa; ‘Ethiopia Day’ was observed against Italian aggression. By the Second World War, India’s interactions with African nations were rooted in its own quest for independence.

Domestic factors — negligible in this phase

• Slavery was abolished in British territories in 1870; thereafter Indian workers were sent in thousands to British Africa on indentured servant contracts, often differing little from slaves.
• The presence of Indians in Africa gained national attention only after the First World War and Mahatma Gandhi’s return from South Africa in 1915.
• India–Africa trade was minimal, perhaps less important than in the pre-colonial period, since both British India and African colonies traded mainly with the metropolitan colonizer.

Individual level

• Mahatma Gandhi → worked primarily for the Indian community in South Africa; his later sympathy for subjugated Africa made him a hero across the continent. Became the earliest link between nationalist leaders in Africa and India; his struggle inspired African leaders of the twentieth century, notably Nelson Mandela. His South African experience broadened the worldview of the Indian freedom movement.
• Jawaharlal Nehru → where Mahatma Gandhi approached the colonial histories of India and Africa from the perspective of individual rights, Jawaharlal Nehru viewed them through the lens of a collective struggle against global imperialism. He argued that international peace could not coexist with colonial oppression: so long as one nation dominates another, there will be persistent attempts to undermine the established structure, and lasting stability will remain unattainable. Peace can never emerge from systems of imperialism and capitalism.

Phase II — 1947 to the early 1990s

As per Rani D. Mullen, most of Africa was still under colonial rule at the time of India’s independence. Decolonization and the emergence of NAM were the two decisive systemic factors.

Supporting the decolonization of Africa

• Franklin D. Roosevelt’s push for anti-colonialism and self-determination strengthened the Congress argument. Indians in the British Indian army fought the Italians in Ethiopia and the Italians and Germans in North Africa during the Second World War → this cemented post-independence ideological support for decolonization.
• M. Ayoob: support for decolonization also rested on the practical concern that India’s own foreign affairs could be autonomous only if it interacted with fully independent states.
• India established formal relations with independence movements and set up diplomatic representation in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya even before independence; it sent non-combatant troops and a special representative to Congo during its civil war.
• From the early 1950s India focused on South–South cooperation; in 1955 it played a significant role at the Asian-African Conference in Bandung.

The 1962 turn

• A. Ghosh: despite the rhetoric of decolonization, India’s effort at Afro-Asian solidarity suffered a setback when, during the Sino-Indian War of 1962, only Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Libya expressed support.
• Some prominent African leaders, particularly in Kenya, openly supported China. India’s approach of peaceful methods for attaining independence began losing appeal against China’s open support for armed liberation. India’s defeat weakened its soft power in Africa.
• After Jawaharlal Nehru’s death in 1964, policy continued to support decolonization and South–South cooperation but became selective and pragmatic. ITEC was launched in 1964 as the main instrument of bilateral foreign assistance, resting on economic foundations.
• By the late 1980s nearly all African countries had achieved independence. India continued the campaign against apartheid, while post-independence idealism gave way to a pragmatic approach built on economic cooperation. ITEC built up generations of civil servants and policymakers from African countries trained in India.

The Non-Aligned Movement

• S.B. Bhattacharya: NAM was largely the idea of Jawaharlal Nehru and took shape at the 1955 Bandung Conference. The first NAM conference of 1961 established the common ideological ground between India and Africa, visible in the anti-colonial and anti-racism agenda.
• Rani D. Mullen: non-alignment was initially successful, meeting fertile ideological ground in newly independent African countries trying to ward off external political interference. In 1986 NAM helped set up the Action for Resisting Invasion, Colonialism, and Apartheid (AFRICA) Fund; India was a large contributor, and Indo-African cooperation produced many UN General Assembly resolutions condemning racism and apartheid.
• Indirect outcomes → diplomatic status to the African National Congress in 1967 and to SWAPO in 1985; indirect funding of African independence movements through the Organization of African Unity and various United Nations funds.
• The critical counterpoint (Rani D. Mullen) → most newly independent African countries did not adhere to non-alignment and instead aligned with a superpower to secure development and military financing.
• NAM became increasingly factionalized and even radicalized during the 1970s and 1980s, while India in the post-Nehru era turned to domestic issues.

Domestic and individual factors

• Rani D. Mullen: domestic factors played no significant role in shaping India’s Africa policy, at least until the 1990s. Trade with Africa between the 1950s and 2010 accounted for less than 11 per cent of both exports and imports; since 2010 exports rose faster, though the total remained below 11 per cent in 2014-15. India’s closed economy kept domestic economic factors marginal.
• Nehruvian policy on the diaspora instructed non-resident Indians in Africa that their loyalties should reside with their African homelands and that they should not seek privileges at the cost of opportunities for Africans.
• Jawaharlal Nehru enjoyed a virtual carte blanche in foreign policy; he viewed Africa as a neighbour across the ocean, even a sister continent. Friendships with Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt cemented that commitment.
• Indira Gandhi, from 1966, directed attention towards a few nations that had backed India in 1962, prioritising economic cooperation while keeping domestic matters primary. By the time Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister in 1984, Africa policy was no longer associated with any individual.
• S.B. Bhattacharya: relations did not break down. The 1971 war, the 1974 nuclear test and the Green Revolution raised India’s prestige in Africa; through the 1970s and 1980s a rising sense of shared development challenges renewed the articulation of South–South cooperation.

‘Afro Asian countries became the principal arena for India’s policy and diplomacy during the 1950s’

Muni (1991:862)

Phase III — India and Africa since the early 1990s

Systemic factors — the geopolitical realignment

• With the end of the Cold War in 1989-90, India’s policy towards sub-Saharan Africa changed. Reach extended from traditional Anglophone Africa to Francophone and Lusophone countries; closer politico-military engagement was sought to counter rising regional threats, including China.
• Rani D. Mullen: the end of the Cold War left the US as sole superpower; in a unipolar world order India had to reposition itself in Africa and seek new friends, and to differentiate its policies from China.
• New embassies were opened; the India-Africa Forum Summit was started. India sought more adequate representation in the voting and management mechanisms of the UNSC, the World Bank and the IMF.
• The NAM forum of the Cold War era was replaced by regional organizations addressing particular issues → ECOWAS, NEPAD, TEAM-9, and the IBSA Dialogue Forum (2003).

Economic imperatives

• The 1991 crisis led to neoliberal LPG reforms, which reshaped the relationship. India needed new resources and markets. Focus Africa (2002) provided financial assistance to trade bodies and export promotion councils.
• For much of the twentieth century Indian assistance took the form of technical assistance and training slots through ITEC and its corollary, the Special Commonwealth African Assistance Programme, along with grants largely to Anglophone countries.
• In the twenty-first century, development cooperation is increasingly focused on lines of credit through the Export-Import Bank of India. Indian economic diplomacy now covers all sub-Saharan African countries; China has engaged similarly since the turn of the century → rivalry between the two rising Asian powers for primacy.

Three domestic drivers

Declining individual factors

• Domestic pressures drove the UPA government to rejuvenate Africa policy in 2004 → a large increase in development cooperation, public and private investment, more regional Indo-African organizations, and more frequent summits.
• Rani D. Mullen: the importance of domestic factors has risen since the early 1990s while the impact of individual leaders declined, at least until 2014. Seven governments came to power at the centre between 1990 and 2004; as one-party rule gave way to multi-party coalition governments, the weight of any single leader declined.
• The post-2014 majority government created new openings for individual factors, seen in the 2015 India-Africa Summit in New Delhi with its large turnout. Indo-African policy from 2004 to 2014 was not associated with one individual; and despite a majority government, PM Modi did not concentrate personally on Africa, preferring to focus on the region.

Developments under the Modi government

As per S. Jaishankar, PM Modi brought new thinking and energy to these ties through his perspectives on greater equity and sustainable development, devoting a higher degree of attention, resources and capabilities to this account.

• High-level visits → since 2014, 34 outgoing visits by India’s President, Vice-President and Prime Minister to Africa; over 100 incoming visits from African counterparts.
• Diplomatic footprint → since 2018, 18 new embassies, bringing Indian missions and posts on the continent to 49.
• IAFS elevated in 2015 through an expanded format with participation of all African states, 41 represented at Head of State or Government level. The Covid pandemic interrupted this momentum and the initiative needs restarting.
• Ten Guiding Principles enunciated at the Ugandan Parliament in July 2018.
• Areas of cooperation → health, green and sustainable development, education including skilling, IT, agriculture, and the digital economy with emerging technologies such as AI, AR and blockchain.
• India-Africa Defence Ministers’ Conclave, 2020, with DEFEXPO INDIA → institutionalised defence cooperation.
• Vaccine Maitri → medicines, vaccines and equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic, in the spirit of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam; training of healthcare workers and paramedical staff for pandemic management.

The Ten Guiding Principles — and Agenda 2063

Announced by Narendra Modi while addressing the Ugandan Parliament in July 2018; these principles form the bedrock for strengthening relations.

• Vision → align India’s growth trajectory with Africa’s Agenda 2063 to catalyze mutual resurgence.
• India would address Africa’s priorities, demands and needs, rather than impose a unilateral agenda.
• Core content → Africa at the top of India’s priorities; demand-driven and consultative projects; respect for sovereignty and ownership; human-centric development; security cooperation against common threats; maritime openness; partnership on global challenges including climate and UNSC reform.
• Operational translation → no-conditionality development cooperation; capacity building over extractive models; technology and digital public infrastructure sharing; market access through the Duty-Free Tariff Preference scheme; multilateral advocacy, including the African Union’s G20 seat.

Africa’s Agenda 2063

Adopted in 2015, with the vision of a strong, peaceful, integrated and prosperous Africa by 2063, marking the 100th anniversary of the African Union. Rajiv Bhatia: India’s Africa policy aligns with Agenda 2063, reflecting shared goals and vision; as the role of the WTO declines, India should use openings such as the AfCFTA, which encompasses all African nations, to widen economic partnership.

Areas of cooperation

ITEC — the instrument of capacity building

Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation

Established in 1964; the cornerstone of India’s development cooperation with other developing nations. Purpose → capacity building and skill development through training and technical assistance for professionals and government officials from partner countries.

Features: Comprehensive capacity building · Support for resource-limited countries · Tailored training · People-to-people diplomacy · Sustainable impact · South–South promotion · Continuous diversification

Impact on India–Africa relations

• ITEC has built strong relations with African nations and established India’s reputation as a trusted partner in Africa’s development journey.
• Over 37,000 Africans trained under ITEC and ICCR scholarship programmes.
• ITEC alumni networks are one of the instruments India uses to differentiate its engagement from China’s.
• The Pan-Africa e-Network has transitioned to the e-VidyaBharati and e-AarogyaBharati (e-VBAB) project, which continues large-scale enrolments and tele-health services.

Geo-economic and geo-strategic dimensions

China in Africa — and the Indian counter-model

• Chinese presence goes back to the Cold War. From the time of Mao Zedong, China promoted armed struggle against colonial rule, which appealed to many African states and allowed it to provide economic aid to decolonised nations.
• Post-Cold War, China became aggressive in pushing investments and searching for markets and raw materials, focusing on connectivity infrastructure that eases the transport of resources home. The Maritime Silk Route and Belt and Road Initiative extend this older strategy.
• The Xi Jinping administration uses chequebook diplomacy and debt trap diplomacy to gain strategic depth in geostrategically important countries.
• Rani D. Mullen: China has established a significant presence in infrastructure, mining and energy; India faces stiff competition in investment, trade and influence.
• Constantino Xavier: beyond punctual differences of form and style, Indian interests significantly overlap with those of China in Africa, producing an implicit competitive dynamic as both powers seek to satisfy domestic growth rates and rising nationalist expectations by consolidating new zones of influence.
• Besides operating about 47 ports, China has set up its first-ever naval base in Africa at Djibouti, read by Indian strategists as an attempt to encircle India as part of the String of Pearls network.
• India’s FDI in Africa fell from $16 billion in 2011-12 to $14 billion in 2016-17, while China’s rose from $16 billion to $40 billion in the same period (UNCTAD World Investment Report 2018).

Two models in Africa — the structural contrast

• CHINESE MODEL — State-driven · resource-centric · enclave firms. Industries and factories set up, Chinese labour exported, resources extracted and moved home on the infrastructure built to connect industry to port. The African state gains limited pecuniary profit through taxation; disenchantment follows, and the state supports the Chinese rather than its own people, becoming a rentier state
• INDIAN MODEL — Private-sector-led · capacity-building · locally integrated. Strategies that ‘result in greater integration into domestic markets and operate extensively through informal channels’, against Chinese strategies that ‘yield them greater control up and down the production line, resulting in enclave types of corporate profiles, with more limited spillover effects’

Where India’s comparative advantage lies

• Respect for African sovereignty; a relationship of equal partners engaged for mutual benefit. India presents itself as the alternative, older and democratic partner for economic development.
• Constantino Xavier locates the advantage in a successful democratic experience — preserving territorial integrity and delivering socio-economic development for one of the world’s most ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse populations with political pluralism. As Africa transitions to democracy and greater political freedom, the sustainability of the so-called ‘Beijing consensus’ of authoritarian and dirigiste growth will become unsustainable. India does not support ‘democracy promotion’, but is ready to share expertise on electronic voting systems, electoral management, federalism, parliamentary procedures, decentralization, local government, and the training and management of an independent judiciary — an area of inter-democratic cooperation China cannot tap into soon.
• Unlike China, democratic India may benefit from the benign image it enjoys in the United States, Europe and Japan as a potential partner in third regions.
• Attractiveness rests on soft infrastructure — IT goods and pharmaceutical products — the global presence of corporates such as the TATA Group, Mahindra & Mahindra and ArcelorMittal, and India’s increasing donor role.
• Multi-party democracy, the diaspora and ITEC alumni networks are the differentiating instruments.

Areas of concern, contestation and other challenges

Recent controversies over Indian economic investments in sub-Saharan countries such as Ethiopia, where land acquisition has been associated with forced resettlement without compensation, raise the question of whether Mahatma Gandhi’s formulation on commerce in ideas and services holds today.

Policy suggestions

Rani D. Mullen: there has been a convergence of systemic and domestic factors likely to continue driving enhanced Indo-African ties in the twenty-first century. This deepening engagement should rest on realist assessments of domestic needs. Reforming international multilateral organizations to reflect current realities, and building a multipolar world in which India plays a larger role, become possible through innovative and consistent engagement with 55 UN-recognized countries. India can counter China’s growing influence by promoting South–South cooperation.

‘India is the world’s largest democracy and has a proud record of regular elections. Many African countries have recently reverted from one party or military to multiparty systems of governments.’

Shashi Tharoor

A coherent multi-actor ‘Africa Policy’ driven by the state

• Identify key stakeholders — the State, the private sector and the Indian diaspora — and assess how each should engage with African countries on their own terms while keeping India’s economic diplomacy in view. A coordinating forum should be created.
• Set broad guidelines for private-sector conduct. Indian firms must be obliged to adhere to labour laws and environmental regulations and attend to social issues; the pharmaceutical sector should be more deeply involved with local health issues and the eradication of diseases such as malaria.
• Develop a policy for engagement with People of Indian Origin in East Africa. Harry Broadman: ‘ethnic networks’ would enhance trade and investment ties by overshadowing the ‘imperfections and asymmetries of market information’.
• Engagement should not be limited to an economic elite with political connections. Indian policy has shifted from complete neglect only to selective engagement. In South Africa, as Sanusha Naidu observes, many in the Indian community do not have a political or economic affinity to India; India can use its strengths in education and healthcare to advance this section and strengthen ancestral ties.

Energy policy within sustainable development

• Position energy policy within the wider relationship by linking it to private-sector trade and investment; optimisation should rest on mutual dependence — India’s need for energy against Africa’s need for investment, technology and capacity building.
• Infrastructure development in countries such as Nigeria must be supplemented by transfer of skill and technical knowhow to develop African oil companies themselves. One route is Petroleum India International, set up to provide technical, managerial and human resource development services in upstream and downstream sectors globally.
• Help African countries strengthen governance frameworks in the energy sector, working with the New Partnership for Africa’s Development under its ‘Economic and Corporate Governance Programme’, applying India’s own experience of building energy governance in a complicated domestic environment.

Bilateral and multilateral institutional framework

• Give economic engagement with African Indian Ocean Rim countries as much emphasis as defence ties; increase diplomatic visits and build a detailed strategy for diplomatic, cultural and economic engagement.
• Revitalize the relatively inactive IOR-ARC. The disparate nature of its membership and the absence of a strong vision have prevented tangible results; India should capitalize on China’s non-membership and use it to expand economic and defence engagement with East Africa.
• Inject bilateralism → one-on-one interaction with African nations. Morocco, for instance, has initiated a moderate Islamic programme for tackling radicalisation. This requires expanding India’s diplomatic strength, currently insufficient.
• Brand-building → spend more diplomatic capital publicising the projects India funds and executes. After the Ebola outbreak India emerged as one of the top donors to Africa, but the effort received inadequate publicity; the same holds for Vaccine Maitri.
• Emerging areas → green economy, renewable energy, organic agriculture, public health security and counterterrorism. S. Jaishankar points to health, digital and green growth as the current emphasis; the private sector has scope in secondary and tertiary hospitals and laboratories.
• Diaspora as bridge → Rajiv Bhatia calls this link a ‘Third Space’. The diaspora is estimated at 3 million across 46 countries, with the largest concentrations in South Africa, Mauritius, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique. India extends e-visa facilities to 33 African countries and has emerged as an attractive destination for medical tourism.
• Four weaknesses to correct → government and private companies do not keep each other’s interests in mind, preventing a coherent policy; policy is not supplemented by a strong and proactive diplomatic thrust; India in some instances emulates China’s aid-for-resources strategy, which is not the best approach for long-term relations; and engagement with politically unstable yet resource-rich countries could threaten Indian interests and taint perceptions.
• India needs a long-term vision based on a comprehensive analysis of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, aligned to African developmental needs and social concerns, which will legitimise its presence in the eyes of African people.

Views of scholars — Africa

Theoretical linkages

• South–South cooperation → the relationship reflects the Bandung spirit of solidarity and mutual development, countering traditional North–South dynamics, with emphasis on equitable development in climate resilience, food security and development funding.
• Complex interdependence (Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye) → ties span trade, security, technology and culture, which minimises the risk of single-issue confrontation.
• Soft power and constructivism → cultural exchange, scholarships and people-centric diplomacy.

“Soft power is the ability to shape the preferences of others through appeal and attraction.”

Joseph Nye